London: Nadezhda Popova (pictured), a Soviet aviator who became one of the most celebrated of the so-called “Night Witches,” female military pilots who terrorised the Nazi enemy with their nocturnal air raids during World War II, died on July 8. She was 91.
Her death was reported by London’s The Daily Telegraph. The place and cause could not immediately be confirmed. In a statement, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych called Popova’s life “an example of selfless service to [the] Motherland.” Her “feats in the course of the Great Patriotic War,” he said, “will never be forgotten.”
Popova was among the first female pilots to volunteer for service in the Soviet military during World War II and became a squadron commander in her swashbuckling all-female regiment. She flew 852 combat missions — including 18 during one night — and was honoured as a Hero of the Soviet Union, one of the nation’s highest decorations.
Like American women in the age of Amelia Earhart, many Soviet women had become enchanted with aviation in the 1930s. They were initially rejected for combat service during World War II, but Soviet leader Joseph Stalin thought better of the decision in 1941, when Germany broke the Soviet-German nonaggression pact and invaded.
Led by Marina Raskova, a renowned aviator who would later die in a plane crash, three women’s regiments were born of necessity. While other nations employed female pilots largely in support roles, the Soviets dispatched their female aviators on delivery and reconnaissance missions, as well as daring raids to take out enemy targets.
The women were treated in many respects like their male colleagues, although they did receive larger soap rations.
Popova served with the night bombers, perhaps the most feared of the three all-female regiments. Their planes, rickety two-seaters made of plywood and canvas, were jerry-rigged as bombers.
The pilots achieved a degree of surprise by shutting down their engines in the last stages of their bomb runs; the Germans heard only the hiss of the air flowing across their wings and, likening the sound to that of a broomstick in flight, came to refer to the women as Night Witches.
“The Germans spread stories that we were given special injections and pills which gave us a feline’s perfect vision at night,” Popova told historian Albert Axell in an interview for his book Greatest Russian War Stories, 1941-1945. “This was nonsense, of course,” she continued. “What we did have were clever, educated, very talented girls.”
The women generally ranged in age from 17 to 26. Popova was 19 when she joined the pilots and became “one of the best, and one of the luckiest,” according to The Moscow Times.
“When the wind was strong it would toss the plane. In winter when you’d look out to see your target better, you got frostbite, our feet froze in our boots, but we carried on flying,” she said.
“If you give up nothing is done and you are not a hero. Those who gave in were gunned down and they were burned alive in their craft as they had no parachutes.”
WP-BLOOMBERG
